history of voting rights assignment

The True History of Voting Rights

At the end of the lesson:

• Students will be able to recognize that the expansion of voting rights in the United States has not been a smooth path, nor has it been a history of continuous progress.  
• Students will be able to connect the history of voter suppression in the U.S. to the present.
• Eligible students will be able to register to vote.
• Is voting a right or a privilege?
• What is the “story of voting rights” we tell about the United States? 
• Handout: Voting Rights Cards (Printed and cut or cropped, with one card distributed to each student)

Franchise [ fran -chize] (noun): a right or privilege that a government guarantees its people. This usually refers to the right to vote. The verb “ enfranchise ” means to grant the right to vote to a person or group of people. The verb “ disenfranchise ” means to take the right to vote away from a person or group of people.

Voter Suppression [ voh -ter suh- preh -shun] (noun): an effort or activity designed to prevent people from voting by making voting impossible, dangerous or just very difficult. Voter suppression can be legal and organized (for example, literacy tests or laws limiting the number of polling places), illegal and organized (for example, mailers or robocalls telling people to vote on the wrong day), or illegal and unorganized (for example, an individual showing up to a polling place to intimidate others into not voting).

Note to the Teacher

We are publishing this lesson in the fall of 2020, as many educators are teaching remotely. Where necessary, the procedure for this lesson includes adaptations for classes meeting online. 

• Start with a warm-up to get students thinking about the history of voting and voting rights in the United States. Ask them to write down one fact they already know about the topic and have two or three students share out. This is a good time to introduce the idea of that there’s a “story of voting rights” most of us are familiar with, and that many believe that in the United States, the fight for voting rights ended in the 1960s.
• Distribute the Voting Rights Cards , and have the five students with “Constitutional Amendment” cards line up in chronological order. [ Those teaching online could email or message each student with the content of one “Voting Rights Card” at the beginning of class, noting which student has which card. When it’s time for those with “Constitutional Amendment” cards to line up, call on the five students with these cards and ask each, in order, to read their card aloud. ]
• Ask all students to take two minutes and write a sentence or two that tells “the story of voting rights” we get when we only consider the Constitutional Amendments. Have one or two students share these stories. After they do, you might point out that that the common story of voting in the United States is one of continuous expansion: The right to vote is extended and extended and extended again until all Americans are included. But we know that’s not the whole story.
• Have students divide into two teams, according to their cards: 1776–1964 and 1965–present. Ask each team to work on one side of the room to create a “human timeline,” lining up in chronological order as quickly as possible. [ Those teaching online could prepare ahead to have each team go into a different breakout room. Provide students a shared document in which they can list their names in the chronological order of their timeline cards so that when the class comes back together, they can read out their half of the timeline in order. ]
• Once students have formed their “human timeline,” have them share aloud in chronological order, reading their date and its corresponding event. As they share, define any unfamiliar vocabulary (e.g., poll tax, ratified ) and check for understanding. After the timeline’s been read aloud, share a copy of the complete Voting Rights Timeline with students, so they have all of the dates in one place.
• Divide students into groups of three. Ask each group to read through the timeline and write a more accurate two- to three-sentence “story of voting rights.”
• Come back together as a class and have each group share their story. When necessary, summarize these more complicated “stories of voting rights” and supplement them with evidence from the timeline when possible.
• Explain to students that, even though the fight for voting rights often gets talked about like it’s in the past, it’s still unfolding today. Share a few key statistics about voting:  2 of 5 Americans don’t vote in Presidential elections.  3 of 5 Americans don’t vote in Midterm elections.  1 of 5 Americans isn’t registered to vote.  Ask students to take two minutes to list as many reasons as they can think of that explain why voter turnout is so low in the United States.
• Give students a minute to share their ideas aloud. You can explain that most of the reasons people don’t register and vote fit into one of three categories: People don’t vote because they don’t have the right to vote.  People don’t vote because voting is too difficult or dangerous.  People don’t vote because they don’t think their vote makes a difference. It may be useful to list these categories on the board so students will be able to refer back.
• Using these categories as your starting point, list the lesson’s vocabulary terms— franchise (including “disenfranchise”) and voter suppression —on the board. Invite students to share additional examples of voter suppression or disenfranchisement they may have heard about, referring back to the first two reasons people often don’t vote. Ask clarifying questions to ensure students understand the difference between the two.
• Ask students to look back through the timeline and consider the question, “How have disenfranchisement and voter suppression shaped the history of voting rights in the United States?” Allow them time to respond.
• Explain that we might think of voter disengagement as a lighter form of voter suppression: That’s the third reason some people choose not to register or vote— People don’t register or vote because they think their vote doesn’t make a difference. Remind students that this is a message we hear a lot: the system is rigged, or one vote won’t matter, or politics doesn’t really affect my life. When these messages are targeted to certain communities, they become a form of voter suppression.
• If time permits, give students two minutes to free write some arguments they might make to encourage people to vote. Have them share their answers aloud.

Alignment to CCSS

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 6-8 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.1 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.2

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 9-10 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.7

English Language Arts Standards | History/Social Studies | Grade 11-12 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9

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Voting Rights Throughout United States History

Voting rights in the United States have not always been equally accessible. African Americans and women of all ethnicities have fought, and continue to fight, especially hard to have their voices heard.

Voter Registration Drive at the 1973 Black Expo

Voting largely left out nonwhite men and women, regardless of color, for much of American history. This voter registration drive at the Black Expo in Chicago, Illinois, took place just eight years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed in 1973.

Photograph from John White/U.S. National Archives/Alamy Images

The right to vote—and who may exercise it—has changed continuously over the course of United States' history. While states have traditionally determined requirements for voting, the federal government has taken several actions that have altered those requirements in an attempt to create more equity and equality in the process. Today, in order to vote in federal elections, one must be a United States citizen, at least 18 years old by the date of the general election, and a resident of the state in which one votes. However, these requirements used to be more restrictive. Voting After the American Revolution Following the American Revolution, the new country transitioned from a period of being under British rule to developing its own government. After the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the country adopted the United States Constitution in 1787. Article 1 of the Constitution empowers state legislatures to oversee federal elections.  Suffrage , or the right to vote, was granted exclusively to white, land-owning men. Since they were at such an early stage of the republic, the founders believed these men’s economic ties to the country were valuable. However, a growing number of men began to champion an expansion of suffrage during the early 1800s. Following a period that lacked political parties or choices for voters, the 1820s saw the return of a two-party political system, as well as a renewed interest in suffrage . White men continued to move West in search of available land, but many did not feel that ownership should be a requirement for voting. Many states removed that requirement, opening the door for complete white male suffrage . Voting After the Civil War While the country celebrated the expansion of voting rights for white men of all economic levels, the electorate still lacked diversity. Gender and race exclusions still restricted the ability of many citizens living within the United States to exercise the right to vote. Following the conclusion of the American Civil War in the 1860s, the Radical Republicans controlled Congress. These men were primarily white Northerners who wanted to restrict the political power of the South following its rebellion against the U.S. federal government. As a result of the 13th  Amendment , a large number of African Americans living in the South were freed from slavery, in addition to the many living in the North. Radical Republicans saw this as an opportunity not only to help their own cause, but also to extend suffrage to African American men. In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The ratification of the 15th Amendment , which affirmed the right of African American men to vote, followed that of the 14th Amendment , which classified anyone born in the United States a citizen. The 14th  Amendment  also granted "the equal protection of the laws" to all citizens. While this amendment became the basis for citizenship, along with the Indian Citizen Act of 1924 (this allowed for Native Americans to vote but did not enforce the right; it would take 40 more years until all U.S. states granted full suffrage to Native Americans), it would also be cited more than any other in litigation. The 14th Amendment would also be at the center of the civil rights movement, which attempted to combat discrimination African Americans faced for nearly a century after its passage. African Americans faced Supreme Court challenges ( Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) that condoned separation of the races, as well as challenges at the polls. Having to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test were just some examples of legalized state discrimination that African Americans faced in their attempts to exercise their right to vote. Many also faced threats of violence, lynching, and other scare tactics. It was not until the 1960s that the federal government more effectively protected their right to vote. After a series of speeches, sit-ins, and marches in Selma, Alabama, and other cities in the South, the 24th Amendment —which abolished poll taxes—and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected the right to vote for African Americans and others. In the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the court struck down a section of the law that required states with a history of race-based voter discrimination to gain federal approval before changing their election rules. The Fight for Women’s Suffrage Women were important supporters of the abolition movement in the mid-19th century, as they saw parallels with their own inequality during the period. A women’s rights movement developed around the 1840s under the leadership of women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 they introduced the “Declaration of Sentiments,” which included a revision to the Declaration of Independence, that “all men and women are created equal.” While their attempts to achieve women’s suffrage were unsuccessful at the time, they inspired future campaigners. Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote in 1869, but it was not until 1920 that white women were granted the ability to vote nationwide. African American women continued to face obstacles to vote for many years following the 19th Amendment . The Progressive movement’s reforms and women’s work in industry during World War I helped drive support. The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s constant protests, campaigning, and marches finally gained support from prominent politicians , such as President Woodrow Wilson, following the war. It was a catalyst that led more women to become involved in politics and government. The ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to 18, extending suffrage to more young adults.

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Voting Rights

Lesson plan.

Explore the history of voting rights in the United States through an interactive PowerPoint presentation highlighting landmark changes. Following the presentation and class discussion, students apply the new knowledge of how voting legislation evolved to individual scenarios through a class activity. 

Get more great material on Voting Rights in our  Google Slide Deck

Love this lesson?  Explore all of our free election curriculum and teaching resources at our  Election Headquarters . 

iCivics en español! Student and class materials for this lesson are available in Spanish.

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Get access to lesson plans, teacher guides, student handouts, and other teaching materials.

• Voting Rights_Student Docs.pdf
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• Spanish_Voting Rights_Teacher Docs.pdf

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The first amendment, module 13: voting rights in america.

The original Constitution did not specifically protect the right to vote—leaving the issue largely to the states. For much of American history, this right has often been granted to some, but denied to others; however, through a series of amendments to the Constitution, the right to vote has expanded over time. These amendments have protected the voting rights of new groups, including by banning discrimination at the ballot box based on race (15th Amendment) and sex (19th Amendment). They also granted Congress new power to enforce these constitutional guarantees, which Congress has used to pass landmark statutes like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While state governments continue to play a central role in elections today, these new amendments carved out a new—and important—role for the national government in this important area.

Download all materials for this module as a PDF

Learning Objectives

• Describe what the Constitution says about voting rights.
• Identify who can vote in America during various periods in our nation’s history 
• Explore the role of federalism in the context of voting and elections in America.
• Discuss the groups that benefited from the 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments.
• Analyze battles at the Supreme Court over the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Describe the long battle over women’s suffrage, culminating in the 19th Amendment.

13.1 Activity: Voting in the Constitution

• Student Instructions
• Teacher Notes

Purpose In this activity, you will reflect on the importance of the right to vote and the value of informed voters. 

Process Review the following quote from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, abolitionist, suffragist, poet, and writer:

“I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simply more voters, but better voters.” 

Women’s Political Future , 1893 by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

View Visual Info Brief: Frances Harper Quote

After reviewing the quote, discuss with a partner the following questions:

• What is your immediate reaction to the quote? 
• Why is the right to vote important?
• What does it mean to be a “better voter?” 
• Can the right to vote address the “ills of our national life?” If so, how?
• What other actions are needed to address these ills?
• Do you agree or disagree with the quote, and why?  

Launch Present the Visual Info Brief: Frances Harper Quote on the board for the class to view. Define “panacea” for all students.

Share with the students additional information about Harper with the Info Brief: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper . Note the year of the quote. What can they say about the year in relation to voting rights in America? Understanding the social context of the time will help students explore the meaning of the quote in greater detail. Examine the importance of the year, as well as her gender and race, in understanding Harper’s quote. 

Activity Synthesis Have students share their reactions to the quote with a partner and then discuss it as a class. 

Activity Extension (optional) Invite students to review the transcript  of the longer entry of Women’s Political Future and compare it with another famous speech from earlier in Harper’s life, We are All Bound Up Together .  

13.1 Visual Info Brief: Frances Harper Quote

13.1 info brief: frances ellen watkins harper, 13.2 video: voting rights in america.

Purpose In this activity, you will learn about the amendments, laws, and Supreme Court cases that have shaped voting rights in America.

Process Watch the following video about voting rights in America.

Then, complete the Video Reflection: Voting Rights in America worksheet.

Launch Give students time to watch the video and answer the questions on the worksheet.

Activity Synthesis Have students identify the patterns they see in the history of the right to vote in America. Ask them to reflect on the role of voting in the American constitutional system, and why it is important for citizens to have the right to vote. 

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of the history of voting rights in America, ask students to conduct additional research about voting rights and election practices during one of the time periods identified in the worksheet. 

13.2 Video Reflection: Voting Rights in America

13.3 activity: exploring elections and voting in the constitution.

Purpose In this activity, you will examine how the constitutional amendments have shaped elections and voting throughout American history. You will also explore the role of federalism in the context of elections and voting in America. 

Process First, begin by reading the Info Brief: Elections and Voting in the Constitution . Then in your group, read the Interactive Constitution  essay assigned to your group and take notes.

Constitutional amendments addressing election and voting rights:

• Text of the Constitution
• Common Interpretation
• Common Interpretation 

Complete the Activity Guide: Exploring Elections and Voting in the Constitution worksheet.

Finally, share with your class what you learned about your assigned amendment and how it shaped elections and voting in elections. Then, explore the following questions:

• What does the Constitution say about voting rights? What’s in there, and what isn’t?
• Who can vote in America (and when)?
• Before the Constitution, who could vote, and which governments controlled elections and voting? 
• How did Reconstruction transform voting rights in America? What were its limits?
• Which groups benefited from the 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments?

Launch Begin by asking students: Where in the Constitution do you see language that relates to elections and voting? 

Have the students read Info Brief: Elections and Voting in the Constitution.

Assign students one or more of the following sections of the Interactive Constitution to read:

• 12th Amendment
• 15th Amendment
• 17th Amendment
• 19th Amendment
• 23rd Amendment
• 24th Amendment
• 26th Amendment

While analyzing their assigned amendment(s), have the students complete the Activity Guide: Elections and Voting in the Constitution.

Then, have students meet in small groups to share and compare what they learned and build upon each other’s findings. 

Activity Synthesis Have students identify: 

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of voting at the national level, ask the following questions:

• What is the role of the states in voting and elections? What can states control? What limits are set by the Constitution? 
• What sorts of limits were in the original Constitution? What sorts of limits were added through the constitutional amendment process? 
• How do voting requirements vary in different states? 
• Do you think that we need any other constitutional amendments concerning elections and voting? Why, or why not?

13.3 Info Brief: Elections and Voting in the Constitution

13.3 activity guide: exploring elections and voting in the constitution, 13.4 primary source readings: the supreme court and the vote.

Purpose In this activity, you will read a primary source about voting rights and then analyze two landmark Supreme Court decisions addressing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Process Read the Info Brief: The Supreme Court and the Vote .

The teacher will then divide your class into groups. With your group, read W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and the NAACP, Platform Adopted by National Negro Committee (1909). Then, complete the relevant part of the Case Brief: The Supreme Court and the Vote worksheet, reflecting on the following questions:

• Who authored the primary source, and when?
• What is the call to action in this source? 
• Did the American people, their elected officials, and/or the Supreme Court address these concerns over time? If so, when?

Now, your teacher will assign your group one of the following Supreme Court cases. Please read the background information and case excerpt for your assigned case and reflect on how the Court interpreted Congress’s power to enforce the right to vote in each case.

• South Carolina v. Katzenbach
• Shelby County v. Holder

After you read the content of your assigned case, summarize the key arguments offered by the justices, complete the relevant part of the Case Brief: The Supreme Court and the Vote worksheet, reflecting on the following questions:

• Facts: Who are all the people (parties) associated with the case? What was the dispute between them?
• Issue: What is the issue in the case? What constitutional provision is at issue? What is the constitutional question that needs to be answered?
• How does the Court rule? What was the outcome in the case? Who won and who lost? How did the justices vote? What sort of rule does the Court come up with to resolve the issue?
• Who was the author of the majority opinion?
• Were there any concurring or dissenting opinions? Who authored them? What did they say? How would the justices who authored them have ruled in the case?
• How does the Court’s decision address voting rights?
• Were the calls to action from the NAACP committee and W.E.B. DuBois met?

Launch Give students time to read primary source documents and summarize the key arguments of the document in support of granting the right to vote. Sources: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and the NAACP, Platform Adopted by National Negro Committee (1909).

Activity Synthesis

• As a large group, discuss each source and which arguments were the most and least convincing. 
• Have students compare the arguments presented in the sources and identify similarities and differences.
• Ask the class, which, if any, of the arguments presented in the sources are still applicable today? For which groups of people? 

Next, assign each group one of the following Supreme Court cases. 

Have groups continue to build on their Case Brief: The Supreme Court and the Vote worksheet and share their findings. 

Activity Extension (optional) What about women’s suffrage? To understand some of the early debates over women’s voting rights and the Constitution, read an excerpt from the Supreme Court’s decision in Minor v. Happersett and compare it with Susan B. Anthony’s Closing Argument at her trial for election fraud in United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony . Reflect on the following questions:

• How did the Supreme Court rule? What were the Court’s key arguments?
• What were the key arguments advanced by Susan B. Anthony?
• Compare and contrast the arguments advanced by each. Who offered a more persuasive constitutional argument? Why?  

13.4 Info Brief: The Supreme Court and the Vote

13.4 case brief: the supreme court and the vote, 13.4 primary source: w.e.b. dubois, the souls of black folk (1903), 13.4 primary source: naacp, platform adopted by national negro committee (1909), 13.4 primary source: south carolina v. katzenbach (1966), 13.4 primary source: shelby county v. holder (2013), 13.5 activity: the fight for the 19th amendment.

The 19th Amendment bans discrimination at the ballot box based on sex. The battle for women’s suffrage was a long one, involving generations of brave reformers pushing for change at national, state, and local level.

To begin, read Info Brief: The Women’s Suffrage Movement .

Then, your teacher will break your class into groups. Each group should build a women’s suffrage timeline, using the info brief and the  National Constitution Center’s Drafting Table tool .

From there, use the Interactive Primary Source Tool: Historic Debates for and Against Suffrage to create a chart of the main arguments for and against women’s suffrage.

Finally, your group will share what you learned and reflect on the battle for women’s suffrage over time and what that story can teach us about the process of constitutional reform within the American constitutional system. We will return to this big question about constitutional reform in Module 15.  

To begin, have the students read Info Brief: The Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Then, break the class into groups. Each group should build a women’s suffrage timeline, using the Info Brief and the  National Constitution Center’s Drafting Table tool .

From there, each group will use the interactive Debates webpage for and against suffrage to create a chart of the main arguments for and against women’s suffrage.

Finally, as a class, each group will share what they learned and reflect on the battle for women’s suffrage over time and what that story can teach us about the process of constitutional reform within the American constitutional system. We will return to this big question about constitutional reform in Module 15.

13.5 Info Brief: The Women’s Suffrage Movement

13.6 activity: exploring the vote in your community.

Purpose In this activity, you will research how to vote where you live. You will also identify how someone can become an informed voter in your state and locality.

Process Using vote.gov , research your state-run voting website and review the process for voting in your state from start to finish. Fill out the Activity Guide: Exploring the Vote in Your Community worksheet.

Create a one-page infographic or fact sheet on voting for the eligible voters in your school and community. Ensure it has at least the following information:

• Voter eligibility
• Voter registration instructions
• Voting locations
• Election day dates and times 
• How to become an informed voter—sources of reliable information on the candidates
• Other information that you think will be helpful to get to the polls, vote by mail, or to be a “better voter”

Launch Have students discuss their experiences with the voting process from news, to going to the polls with adults in their lives. Give students time to research the process for voting in their state from start to finish.

Activity Synthesis Have students present their one-page infographic or fact sheet on voting. Display voting guides in the classroom and have students develop a plan for sharing their voting guide outside the classroom. 

13.6 Activity Guide: Exploring the Vote in Your Community

13.7 test your knowledge.

Congratulations for completing the activities in this module! Now it’s time to apply what you have learned about the basic ideas and concepts covered.

Complete the questions in the following quiz to test your knowledge.

This activity will help students determine their overall understanding of module concepts. It is recommended that questions are completed electronically so immediate feedback is provided, but a downloadable copy of the questions (with answer key) is also available.

13.7 Interactive Knowledge Check: Voting Rights in America

13.7 printable knowledge check: voting in america, previous module, module 12: slavery in america: from the founding to america’s second founding, next module, module 14: the 14th amendment: battles for freedom and equality.

The 14th Amendment wrote the Declaration of Independence's promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution. Ratified after the Civil War, this amendment transformed the Constitution forever and is at the core of a period that many scholars refer to as our nation’s “Second Founding.” Even so, the 14th Amendment remains the focus of many of today’s most important constitutional debates (and Supreme Court cases). In many ways, the history of the modern Supreme Court is largely a history of modern-day battles over the 14th Amendment's meaning. So many of t...

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Civil rights leaders recognized that securing voter rights was pivotal to ensuring equality for all. During the civil rights movement, volunteers led mass voter registration drives to increase Black voters in the South. Above, Rev. Fred C. Bennette Jr. registers voters in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1963.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

How the U.S. Voting Rights Act was won—and why it’s under fire today

In 1965, this historic civil rights law prohibited discrimination against Black voters. Though it has since been gutted, calls are mounting to renew it.

When Fannie Lou Hamer went to a county clerk’s office in Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote in 1962, she was told to write an essay about a section of the Mississippi state constitution.

“That was impossible,” she recalled in an oral history recorded by the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage. “I didn't even know what it meant, much less [how] to interpret it.” Hamer was threatened with arrest on her way home—and when she got there, her landlord told her to withdraw her voter registration or get out. “I had to leave the same night,” she said.

Hamer’s experience was typical for Americans of color who attempted to vote in the South during the Jim Crow era , when state laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries enforced segregation and racial discrimination. But three years after Hamer was first blocked at the polls, a landmark federal law prohibited the intimidation that she and other would-be voters experienced during an age of widespread voter suppression. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enfranchised Americans who had been barred from exercising their constitutional rights for more than a century.

Several years after slavery was abolished in 1865, voting rights for all American men were enshrined in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, affirmed Black Americans’ citizenship, and the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, forbade denying American citizens the right to vote based on their race.

But the reality was much different for people of color. Southern states erected legal barriers, such as confusing literacy tests and steep poll taxes, to exclude Black voters from exercising their constitutional rights. They regularly purged the voter rolls of Black citizens who had managed to register and held primaries that were only open to white voters. And when women won the right to vote with the 19th Amendment , ratified in 1920, women of color still faced widespread disenfranchisement. ( Women fought for decades to win the right to vote. )

Police frisk a Black man for attempting to join the queue to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

State-sanctioned voter suppression was coupled with intimidation, violence, and social pressure throughout the South. People like Hamer were threatened with the loss of their homes, businesses, and even jobs if they insisted on voting—that is, if they could register at all. And on election day, white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan monitored polling sites to ensure registered Black voters would not vote.

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Despite a wave of new voter registrations following the 15th Amendment, the number of Black male voters dwindled as Southern states imposed discriminatory voting laws. In Louisiana, for example , more than 130,000 Black voters registered in 1896, but only 1,342 in total were registered in 1904; more than 128,000 had been stripped from the rolls in the intervening years. Six decades later in 1962, only 5 percent of eligible Black voters in Mississippi had registered to vote. A U.S. Department of Justice report from that year noted 11 majority-Black Southern counties with no Black registered voters.

Civil rights leaders had long recognized that voter rights were pivotal to ensuring equality for all. But it would take years of grassroots organizing, protests, and upheaval to build national momentum for civil rights laws that protected all voters.

A police officer marches more than 400 singing protesters, mostly teenagers, to jail after a voter registration protest in Selma, Alabama, on February 5, 1965.

In 1964, civil rights efforts culminated in the Freedom Summer , a mass voter registration campaign in Mississippi, the state with the lowest number of Black registered voters. Over 10 weeks, more than 1,500 primarily white volunteers flooded the state to register voters. More than 60,000 Black Mississippians participated in meetings and a mock “Freedom Election” designed to show the power of the Black vote.

They were met by rage and violence. Three workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members at the beginning of the project, and throughout the rest of the summer at least 80 people were beaten , 35 shot, six killed, and a thousand arrested. Ultimately, only a few hundred Black people were accepted to the voter rolls. ( This civil rights leader feared for his life after trying to cast a vote. It convinced him to join the movement. )

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What was the Stonewall uprising?

The summer raised national awareness of voter suppression and the ongoing denial of civil rights for Black people, and increased popular support for change. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 took effect in July 1964, prohibiting segregation and discrimination in public places and employment, but it did not provide much protection for voters. Although the act banned unequal application of voter standards, it didn’t eliminate literacy tests or outlaw violence and intimidation at the polls.

In 1965, activists turned their attention to a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. They participated in a series of high-profile demonstrations, including marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a former Alabama KKK leader and Confederate officer. During one march, Alabama state troopers and lawmen brutally attacked John Lewis, then the 25-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other peaceful protesters. Televised footage of what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” outraged and horrified the nation and finally compelled the federal government to act. Ten days later, on March 17, 1965, lawmakers introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress. Lewis went on to become a U.S. Congressman for the state of Georgia, a role in which he served for nearly 34 years as he continued to fight for the rights of all people .

On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed into law the most sweeping voter rights protections the nation had ever seen. The Voting Rights Act abolished literacy tests and established federal oversight and authority over voter registration in areas with histories of voter discrimination—and required those jurisdictions to seek clearance from the federal government before changing voting guidelines.

The law spurred a tidal wave of voter registration. A quarter of a million Black people registered to vote in 1965 alone, and by the decade’s end, the percentage of eligible Black voters who were registered in the South increased from about 35 percent to nearly 65 percent. It was also a victory for all people of color, especially when the law was expanded in 1975 to forbid voting discrimination against people who spoke a language other than English, a step that effectively halted a purge of Latinos from voter rolls in Texas.

The Voting Rights Act was amended five times in the decades that followed, extending its coverage and increasing the government’s authority to determine where federal oversight was needed.

In recent years, though, legal attacks have eroded the federal government’s ability to enforce the law. State legislatures—mainly those controlled by Republicans in states with increased minority turnout , according to a University of Massachusetts Boston analysis—have challenged the Voting Rights Act by passing a wave of new restrictions , including voter ID laws and reduced early voting.

Those states won a key victory in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a key section of the act that allowed federal oversight of districts based on their histories of voter discrimination. Shelby County, Alabama claimed the formula used to make that determination was outdated and therefore unconstitutional. The Supreme Court issued a 5-to-4 ruling in Shelby County’s favor, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the formula was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”

Within hours, Texas announced plans to bring a previously barred voter ID law into effect. North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama soon followed. In 2018, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that at least 23 states from Arkansas to Washington State had enacted “newly restrictive” laws and said that the federal government now “has limited tools to address…potentially discriminatory voting procedures and hardly any tools to prevent voting discrimination before it takes place.” The panel recommended Congress restore voter discrimination protections that existed prior to the 2013 Supreme Court decision.

Defenders of the Voting Rights Act have since pressured Congress to amend the law to include a new formula—one that relies on current data—to determine which districts need to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting laws. In 2019, civil rights leader John Lewis presided over the passage of a bill in the House of Representatives that did just that , though the bill was not taken up by the Republican-led Senate. While calls to action intensified after Lewis’ death in July 2020, the bill would require the support of both houses of Congress.

It’s unclear if legislators will restore the law to its full strength any time soon. But there’s no question that the landmark legislation has made a huge difference for voters nationwide in the last half-century. Of the more than 122 million people who voted in the 2018 midterm elections, a record 25 percent were Black, Asian or Latino—who made up more than 36 percent of the population that year. This percentage of voters had increased from 21.7 percent in 2014. According to the Pew Research Center , that record turnout made the 2018 midterms the most racially and ethnically diverse elections ever held in the United States—thanks in great part to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

• SNCC and CORE
• Black Power
• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever enacted by Congress. It contained extensive measures to dismantle Jim Crow segregation and combat racial discrimination.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed barriers to black enfranchisement in the South, banning poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures that effectively prevented African Americans from voting.
• Segregationists attempted to prevent the implementation of federal civil rights legislation at the local level.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Popular resistance to civil rights legislation, the voting rights act of 1965, what do you think.

• Paul S. Boyer, Promises to Keep: The United States since World War II (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 237.
• See Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014); and Todd Purdum, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014).
• See Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
• John Hope Franklin & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans , 9th Edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 545.
• See David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).
• See Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015).
• See Gary May, Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

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History Of Federal Voting Rights Laws

• Introduction To Federal Voting Rights Laws
• Before the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• The Effect of the Voting Rights Act

The 1965 Enactment

By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.

Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew.

President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965.  Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5 , jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.

The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections , 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review. As the Supreme Court put it in its 1966 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Act:

South Carolina v. Katzenbach , 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966).

The 1970 and 1975 Amendments

Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5. During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.

In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester , 412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden , 446 U.S. 55 (1980), however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making such claims far more difficult to prove.

The 1982 Amendments

Congress renewed in 1982 the special provisions of the Act, triggered by coverage under Section 4 for twenty-five years. Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985, providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from) coverage under the provisions of Section 4 . Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.

The 2006 Amendments

Congress renewed the special provisions of the Act in 2006 as part of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Cesar E. Chavez, Barbara Jordan, William Velazquez and Dr. Hector Garcia Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act. The 2006 legislation eliminated the provision for voting examiners.

Voting Rights

Search form, the history of voting, for most of u.s. history, both citizenship and voting rights have been denied to the majority. it is only recently that the right to vote became universal in the united states..

232 years ago --- The first presidential election was held. Each state had laws restricting voting within its borders. Across the country, only white men were able to vote. Most states had restictions based on land ownership and religious affiliation. In the first presidential election, only white land-owning Protestant men were able to vote. 

231 years ago  --- The Naturalization Act of 1790 establishes who can become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Citizenship is limited to "free white persons of good character." Citizenship is inextricably linked to voting rights, and this law prevented Asian immigrants, indentured servants, slaves, and Native Americans (among others) from becoming citizens, let alone voting.

193 years ago  --- The last state removed its law restricting voting rights by religious affiliation. All white Jewish and Catholic land-owning men in the United States had the right to vote.

165 years ago --- The last state removed its land ownership requirement. After 67 years, all white men in the United States gained the right to vote.

151 years ago --- Through the 15th Amendment, African American men gained the right to vote. From the Amendment's ratification in 1870 until around 1890, there was a brief period in which African American men were able to vote and be elected to congress. After 1890. however, states adopted voter suppression laws that made voting practically impossible for most African Americans.

103 years ago --- Through the 19th Amendment, women gained the right to vote. This Amendment allowed white and African American women to vote - Asian and Native Americans were still disenfranchised.

97 years ago  --- The Snyder Act of 1924 gave citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. However, most state constitutions barred Native Americans from voting, and Native Americans faced the same voter suppression laws as African Americans.

69 years ago  --- The McCarran–Walter Act of 1952 repealed the "free white persons" restriction of the Naturalization Act of 1790, allowing Asians living in the United States to gain citizenship for the first time.

59 years ago --- The last state removed its legal barriers preventing Native Americans from voting.

56 years ago --- The Voting Rights Act was passed. The Voting Rights Act guaranteed all Americans the right to vote. At this point, all Americans legally had the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act enforced voting rights, getting rid of literacy tests, poll taxes, and other systems used to disenfranchise voters.

8 years ago --- The United States Supreme Court struck down key sections of the Voting Rights Act, which has allowed states to pass laws restricting voting access (such as voter ID laws). In the years since, the Supreme Court also ruled that laws that have a disproportionate impact on a racial minority are constitutional.

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Bell Ringer: The History of Voting Rights in the U.S.

History of voting rights in the u.s..

Michael Waldman talks about the history of voting rights in the U.S.

Description

Author Michael Waldman talks about the history of voting rights in the U.S.

Bell Ringer Assignment

• Who were the first Americans that were allowed to vote and how did they secure that right?
• Describe the experience of African Americans as they sought the right to vote.
• Explain the pathway to women's voting rights.

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When Did African Americans Actually Get the Right to Vote?

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: April 15, 2021 | Original: January 29, 2020

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War , the United States found itself in uncharted territory. With the Confederacy ’s defeat, some 4 million enslaved Black men, women and children had been granted their freedom, an emancipation that would be formalized with passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution .

For Black Americans, gaining the full rights of citizenship—and especially the right to vote—was central to securing true freedom and self-determination. “Slavery is not abolished until the Black man has the ballot,” Frederick Douglass famously said in May 1865 , a month after the Union victory at Appomattox.

Presidential Reconstruction & Black Codes

After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, the task of reconstructing the Union fell to his successor, Andrew Johnson . A North Carolina-born Unionist, Johnson believed strongly in state’s rights, and showed great leniency toward white Southerners in his Reconstruction policy. He required the former Confederate states to ratify the 13th Amendment and pledge loyalty to the Union, but otherwise granted them free rein in reestablishing their post-war governments.

As a result, in 1865-66, most Southern state legislatures enacted restrictive laws known as Black codes , which strictly governed Black citizens’ behaviors and denied them suffrage and other rights.

Radical Republicans in Congress were outraged, arguing that the Black codes went a long way toward reestablishing slavery in all but name. Early in 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill, which aimed to build on the 13th Amendment and give Black Americans the rights of citizens. When Johnson vetoed the bill, on the basis of opposing federal action on behalf of formerly enslaved people, Congress overrode his veto, marking the first time in the nation’s history that major legislation became law over a presidential veto.

The 14th & 15th Amendments

With passage of a new Reconstruction Act (again over Johnson’s veto) in March 1867, the era of Radical, or Congressional, Reconstruction, began. Over the next decade, Black Americans voted in huge numbers across the South, electing a total of 22 Black men to serve in the U.S. Congress (two in the Senate) and helping to elect Johnson’s Republican successor, Ulysses S. Grant , in 1868.

The 14th Amendment , approved by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States,” including former slaves, and guaranteed “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens. In 1870, Congress passed the last of the three so-called Reconstruction Amendments, the 15th Amendment , which stated that voting rights could not be “denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Reconstruction saw biracial democracy exist in the South for the first time, though much of the power in state governments remained in white hands. Like Black voters, Black officials faced the constant threat of intimidation and violence, often at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan or other white supremacist groups.

Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Era

While the 15th Amendment barred voting rights discrimination on the basis of race, it left the door open for states to determine the specific qualifications for suffrage. Southern state legislatures used such qualifications—including literacy tests, poll taxes and other discriminatory practices—to disenfranchise a majority of Black voters in the decades following Reconstruction. 

As a result, white-dominated state legislatures consolidated control and effectively reestablished the Black codes in the form of so-called Jim Crow laws , a system of segregation that would remain in place for nearly a century.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, securing voting rights for African Americans in the South became a central focus of the civil rights movement . While the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally banned segregation in schools and other public places, it did little to remedy the problem of discrimination in voting rights.

The brutal attacks by state and local law enforcement on hundreds of peaceful marchers led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists in Selma , Alabama in March 1965 drew unprecedented attention to the movement for voting rights. Later that year, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act , which banned literacy tests and other methods used to disenfranchise Black voters. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes (which the 24th Amendment had eliminated for federal elections in 1964) were unconstitutional for state and local elections as well.

Continued Challenges to Black Voting Rights

Before passage of the Voting Rights Act, an estimated 23 percent of eligible Black voters were registered nationwide; by 1969 that number rose to 61 percent . By 1980, the percentage of the adult Black population on Southern voter rolls surpassed that in the rest of the country, the historian James C. Cobb wrote in 2015 , adding that by the mid-1980s there were more Black people in public office in the South than in the rest of the nation combined.

In 2012, turnout of Black voters exceeded that of white voters for the first time in history, as 66.6 percent of eligible Black voters turned out to help reelect Barack Obama , the nation’s first African American president.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, ruling 5-4 in Shelby v. Holder that it was unconstitutional to require states with a history of voter discrimination to seek federal approval before changing their election laws. In the wake of the Court’s decision, a number of states passed new restrictions on voting, including limiting early voting and requiring voters to show photo ID. Supporters argue such measures are designed to prevent voter fraud, while critics say they—like poll taxes and literacy tests before them—disproportionately affect poor, elderly, Black and Latino voters. 

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How the Founding Fathers' concept of 'Minority Rule' is alive and well today

Terry Gross

A voter leaves a voting booth in Concord, N.H., the during primary election on Jan. 23, 2024. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A voter leaves a voting booth in Concord, N.H., the during primary election on Jan. 23, 2024.

It's a fundamental tension in a democracy: How do you have majority rule in a way that also protects minority rights? Journalist Ari Berman says the Founding Fathers struggled with that question back in 1787 — except, for them, white male landowners were the minority in need of protection.

"Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly," Berman says. "So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly."

In his new book, Minority Rule , Berman connects the debates and compromises of the country's founders to contemporary politics. He says the founding fathers created a system that concentrated power in the hands of the elite and that today, institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate — designed as a check against the power of the majority — are having much the same effect.

Berman notes that in the country's first presidential election, in 1789, only a small fraction of the population was eligible to vote — and in certain states, voters were only allowed to vote for electors, not the candidates themselves.

A Growing Number Of Critics Raise Alarms About The Electoral College

Though the right to vote has since been expanded, Berman says the democratic process remains deeply flawed. He points out that in 2000 and again in 2016, the presidential candidate who won the popular vote did not win the electoral vote. Additionally, he says, because the Constitution stipulates that each state gets two senators, regardless of its population, "smaller, whiter, more conservative states have far more power and representation in the Senate then larger, more diverse, more urban states."

Biden Transition Updates

Electors across the country vote for president: what you need to know.

"What we see right now is the same kind of thing, in which a privileged, conservative, white minority is trying to suppress the power of a much more diverse multiracial governing majority," Berman says. "And that's a very dangerous situation for American democracy."

Interview highlights

Minority Rule, by Ari Berman Farrar, Straus and Giroux hide caption

Minority Rule, by Ari Berman

On the Constitution as a flawed document

We venerate the Constitution as a civic religion. I think we would be much greater served to look at the Constitution as a whole document and say, there are some remarkable parts of this document, but there's also some really flawed parts of this document that we still haven't corrected. Because the really remarkable thing is that even as America has democratized in the centuries since — and nobody would argue that America isn't more democratic now than it was back then — some features of the Constitution have become more undemocratic.

On the creation of the Electoral College to uphold minority rule

Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly. They felt like the public would be uninformed, or it would be chosen by the largest states, or would be chosen by free states in a way that would hurt the South. So it's interesting, one of the themes that runs through the book and runs through the founding is that these smaller minorities wanted protection. And when I may say smaller minorities, I don't mean minority groups. I mean the small states wanted protection, the slave states wanted protection, and they felt like they would get that protection in the Electoral College. So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly.

On how representatives from Delaware scuffled the initial plan to have Senate representation being based on population

James Madison and other prominent framers wanted the Senate to be based on proportional representation, so they wanted it to be based on population. So larger states like Virginia would have more representation than smaller states like Delaware. But the smaller states rebelled. And there's this amazing moment at the Constitutional Convention where the attorney general of Delaware gets up and he tells the likes of James Madison, if you don't give us the same representation, we're going to find a foreign ally who we're going to join with instead, and we're going to leave the United States of America. And that was a stunning demand. The idea that they would go rejoin England or they would join France instead, if they didn't have the same level of representation, meant that the larger states had no choice but to give in to the demand of the smaller states to ratify the Constitution.

But what Madison worried about is that it would allow what he called a more objectionable minority than ever to control the U.S. Senate, because if the smaller states had the same level of representation as the larger states, that was inevitably going to lead to minority rule. And Madison worried that would get worse as more states join the union. And, of course, that's what's happened today, where the gap between large and small states is dramatically larger than it was back in 1787.

On how the two Senator per state representation affects minority rule

Just to give you one really stunning stat , by 2040, 70% of the population is going to live in 15 states with 30 senators. That means that 30% of the country, which is going to be whiter, more rural, more conservative, is going to elect 70% of the U.S. Senate. So the trend in the U.S. Senate is becoming more imbalanced and more undemocratic. And what's really interesting to me is a lot of conservatives want to go back and they want to quote the framers, but they ignore that a lot of the framers, including James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, had grave concerns about some of the institutions they were creating, particularly the structure of the U.S. Senate.

Lauren Krenzel and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

• Philadelphia

For some, voting is more than a civic duty — it’s continuing the fight of their ancestors

“We need to teach children at a young age that they need to vote as if their life depends on it,” said Khalil Abdus-Salaam, a retired Philadelphia firefighter.

Lelia G. Johnson, 65, was finished with her primary day duty by 8 a.m. She didn’t actually have to vote — she had mailed in her ballot weeks earlier. She had to take her young cousin to the polls.

“I told her to meet me on the porch at 7 a.m.,″ Johnson said referring to the time polls opened on election day. The two journeyed not only to the polling place at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School on Lehigh Ave. in North Philadelphia. They also took a trip back through time.

For Johnson, who can’t remember missing an election since she was able to vote, exercising her franchise is as much about civic engagement as it is about honoring the voting battles of her ancestors. She wanted her cousin, whom she said was a member of the family’s 10th generation, to understand the important role voting played in their family history. How it allowed them, and many other Black families, to gain access to education and economic opportunities.

“Our family voted, although back in the day, like my great grandfather, some voted Republican because that was the only way they could get a job in the city,” said Johnson, a lifelong Democrat.

Fighting for the franchise

Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 which gave Black men the right to vote. Black women had to wait until 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment.

But the Constitution didn’t protect Black voting rights as local governments fought back with with discriminatory practices including poll taxes and literacy tests as well as intimidation and violence designed to keep African Americans away from the polls.

Over a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, in January 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., started a civil disobedience campaign in Selma, Alabama to bring attention to Black disenfranchisement. State troopers attacked protestors in March that year as they attempted to cross the Pettus Bridge but the violence was captured on national television.

In the wake of public outrage over the violence, President Lyndon Baines Johnson successfully pushed and signed the Voting Rights Act that prohibited discriminatory voting practices in August, 1965. By 1969, the percentage of voting-age Black people registered to vote climbed from an estimated 23% to 61%.

“If your voice is not heard you are subject to having history repeat itself. We don’t have the luxury to sit back and not vote.” Nikia Owens

“The importance of voting was something that was instilled in me, especially going to Howard University,” said Nakia Owens, president and CEO of the Campaign for Working Families. Owens received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the historical Black university. “If your voice is not heard you are subject to having history repeat itself. We don’t have the luxury to sit back and not vote.”

“We need to teach children at a young age that they need to vote as if their life depends on it,” said Khalil Abdus-Salaam, 64, a retired city firefighter as he swept the front porch on North 22nd St. Abdus-Salaam had also voted by mail.

“We have been miseducated for so long,” he said referring to the seminal 1933 book, The Mis-education of the Negro , by the historian Carter G. Woodson who believed forgetting the history of accomplishments of your forebears brings with a loss of inspiration.

The most critical issues for Abdus-Salaam, who voted for Biden, are racism and environment.

And he also doesn’t want Trump to come back into office. “I knew Donald Trump’s history even before he ran for office.”

Push for November turnout

In the Trump-Biden rematch, Pennsylvania is a key battle ground state. Yet, Black voting history seems to be losing its power as a motivating force for voting, especially among young Black men.

In February Councilmember Isaiah Thomas announced an effort to register 2,024 Black men under 40 to vote in the upcoming general election. “Black voters helped determine the past few election cycles in Philadelphia,” Thomas said at the effort’s announcement. “And essentially have an impact on elections in the entire nation.”

» READ MORE: How Philly officials plan to register 2,024 young Black men to vote ahead of the November election

President Biden has called the city “the backbone of my campaign” and on election day, the Biden-Harris campaign and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party opened its first local Democratic Coordinated Campaign Office in North Philadelphia near 28 and Poplar streets, signaling the start of its general election get-out-the-vote campaign.

A list of North Philadelphia politicians including State Rep. Malcom Kenyatta, City Councilmember Jeffrey Young, Jr., State Rep. Donna Bullock, and 29th District ward leader Michelle Brownlee stressed that placing Biden’s office in North Philadelphia signaled the importance of the African American turnout for Democratic win in Pennsylvania.

“At the end of the day, elections are decided by us. They are decided by what we do when we come to these coordinated offices and they give you a list and they say go knock on all these doors and you knock on some of the doors. And then we lose the election like we did in 2016 by a couple of thousand votes,” said Kenyatta referring to Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania win by only 44,000 votes .

On Tuesday, Kenyatta won the Democratic primary for Auditor General, the state’s fiscal watchdog.

Campaign senior advisor Kellan White called the office opening, along with Biden’s recent visit to a Martin Luther King Recreation Center in North Philadelphia, an “unabashed presence in (the) neighborhood”

“This is what Kellan and the Biden-Harris team is representing here coming into our community — to give us the support we need to get the right team at the top and down ballot back to their respective places,” Brownlee said.

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As Civil Rights Era Fades From Memory, Generation Gap Divides Black Voters

Many older Black voters see moral and political reasons to vote. Younger Black voters feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

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By Maya King

Reporting from Atlanta

For years, Loretta Green has voted at her Southwest Atlanta precinct wearing the same custom T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of her first voter registration card, dated to 1960. The front of it reads: “This is why I vote.”

Since gaining the legal right, Ms. Green, 88, has participated in every possible election. This November will be no different, she said, when she casts a ballot for President Biden and Democrats down the ticket.

But conversations with her younger relatives, who have told her they’re unsure of voting or considering staying home, illustrate some of the challenges Mr. Biden’s campaign faces in reassembling his winning 2020 coalition, particularly in key battleground states like Georgia. While Ms. Green and many older Black voters are set on voting and already have plans in place to do so, younger Black voters, polling and focus group data show, feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

“To me, voting is almost sacred. Look at what people went through. The struggles. The people that allowed themselves to be beaten,” Ms. Green said of the civil rights movement that ignited her determination to vote in every election. “I think there are some young Blacks who probably feel like it didn’t even happen.”

Black voters have long been Democrats’ most loyal constituency, and high turnout from this bloc is crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election. Any drop-off in support could imperil his chances of winning in November. And surveys have shown a striking generational divide within this bloc, driven by what many young people see as broken campaign promises and what party leaders have suggested is a difficulty in communicating Mr. Biden’s accomplishments to voters.

There is still time for Democrats to close this gap. But growing discontent from young voters, especially concerning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza — illustrated in an April New York Times/Siena College poll that shows just 4 percent of voters under 45 strongly approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign policy — underlines the scale of the response that may be required of the president’s re-election campaign to bring young voters back into the fold.

The stark difference between how older and younger Black voters respond to Mr. Biden and Democrats further highlights how different the messages to these voters will have to be.

“It is a generational divide. They don’t know the people who fought and died for their rights,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster, whose polling has found a nearly 30-point gap in support for Democrats among Black voters 18 to 49 years old relative to Black voters over 50. The latter group, he said, “does know those people. They saw that fight. Some of them were in that fight.”

Young Black voters point to higher costs of living, crises abroad and the old ages of both major candidates — Mr. Biden, 81, is the oldest U.S. president, and former President Donald J. Trump is 77 — as reasons for their discontent. They also say that they feel their lives have not improved under Mr. Biden’s presidency and that they have seen little of his campaign promises to lower housing costs, relieve student loan debt and promote racial equity.

These gripes are not unique to young Black voters. In polls, focus groups and interviews, record numbers of Black Americans across ages and genders have expressed disenchantment with Democratic leaders. And the generation gap in support for Democrats is not unique to one race. While most young voters support Democrats and turned out en masse during the 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm elections, many have also said they are deeply dissatisfied with the party and see less reason to turn back out for them.

“I can understand,” said India Juarez, 46, a Southwest Atlanta resident and Democratic voter. “You’ve got two people who really should be retired, enjoying their golden lives.”

Still, for older Black voters, many of whom see Mr. Trump as a threat to their fundamental rights, stopping him and other Republicans from reclaiming power in November outshines their frustrations with Democrats. By an overwhelming majority, Black voters continue to support Democratic candidates and some encourage the younger people in their lives to do the same.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, an influential Biden ally who led civil rights protests in college, said he had spent much of his time outside Washington on college campuses to encourage students to vote. But, he said, “it needs to be an informed vote.”

“I don’t want people going out there talking about, ‘There’s no difference between Trump and Biden.’ I’m going to show them what the differences are. I want them to see why you need to go out and vote,” he said. He lauded the older Black voters who encourage their younger relatives to register and cast a ballot.

Tari Turner, 52, a Black Democratic voter from Detroit, is one of them. She said she often encourages her son, Brice Ballard, 34, to vote in elections even when he is reluctant to.

“I make him vote. He votes,” she said. “I don’t play about him voting. I’ll go pick him up to vote.”

This November, she said she planned to vote and support Mr. Biden’s re-election — a fact she acknowledged tepidly. Mr. Ballard, however, said he would not vote this year, despite his mother’s urging.

“I just don’t feel a connection with either candidate,” he said, adding that he voted in the last presidential election. If he did vote in November, he said he would more likely support Mr. Trump because he felt he was economically better off under his presidency.

Mr. Ballard’s feelings align with another concern for the Biden campaign: a rightward shift among nonwhite voters that is particularly pronounced among young men of color. Mr. Trump and his campaign have recognized this and made some efforts to court Black voters in recent months. Still, many are rooted in stereotype and often offensive.

Mr. Biden’s campaign has aimed to encourage young Black voters to turn out through increased direct contact with them. Senior campaign officials for Mr. Biden underlined his campaign’s presence on college campuses, online and at music festivals and sporting events. They added that the campaign was hiring a director of campus engagement who will focus on mobilizing students at historically Black colleges and universities.

On the airwaves, the campaign is running several ads targeted to Black voters that emphasize the Biden administration’s work to lower health care costs and its large investments in historically Black colleges and universities. Democrats have also enlisted celebrities and local Black elected officials to serve as surrogates.

That hasn’t kept concerns from some Black community leaders at bay. The New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter mobilization group, has held more focus groups with voters and adjusted its talking points during canvassing operations to address disaffected younger voters and the policy issues that matter to them. That way, said Kendra Cotton, the group’s chief executive, organizers can explain to young voters how government can work — rather than admonish them for declining to participate in the political process.

“This narrative that people have that ‘oh, you should vote because so many people died for you to have that right,’ that is not resonating with this new generation at all,” Ms. Cotton said. “And I think us continuing to propagate that narrative, no matter how true and rooted in fact that may be, is off-putting.”

Davan’te Jennings, the Georgia Young Democrats’ Black caucus chair, said he had held a range of conversations with younger Black voters who are not enthusiastic about voting. Some, he said, have expressed interest in supporting Republicans this November.

“They’re like, ‘We’ve been on this Democratic side for so long, they tell us all these things and nothing happens,’” he said. “Let’s see what’s over here on the Republican side.’”

Ms. Green, who said she, too, had concerns about young voters’ involvement, said she planned to volunteer with Mr. Biden’s campaign operation in Georgia to encourage young Black voters to turn out and to talk to them about the importance of their vote — something she sees as both morally and politically significant.

“That’s why we have to tell them our story. They don’t understand it,” she said. “They haven’t seen it. And if we do not continue to talk to them, tell them the history, then they won’t know.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the surname of Tari Turner’s son. He is Brice, not Bryce.

How we handle corrections

Maya King is a politics reporter covering the Southeast, based in Atlanta. She covers campaigns, elections and movements in the American South, as well as national trends relating to Black voters and young people. More about Maya King

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